So matters stood when the first Sunday of a new month came, and Mr. Strong again stood before his church with his Christ message.  It had been a wearing month to him.  Gradually there had been growing upon him a sense of almost isolation in his pulpit work.  He wondered if he had interpreted Christ aright.  He probed deeper and deeper into the springs of action that moved the historical Jesus, and again and again put that resplendently calm, majestic, suffering personality into his own pulpit in Milton, and then stood off, as it were, to watch what he would, in all human probability, say.  He reviewed all his own sayings on those first Sundays and tried to tax himself with utmost severity for any denial of his Master or any false presentation of his spirit; and as he went over the ground he was almost overwhelmed to think how little had been really accomplished.  This time he came before the church with the experience of nearly three weeks’ hand-to-hand work among the people for whose sake he had moved out of the parsonage.  As usual an immense congregation thronged the church.

“The question has come to me lately in different forms,” began Philip, “as to what is church work.  I am aware that my attitude on the question is not shared by many of the members of this church and other churches.  Nevertheless, I stand here to-day, as I have stood on these Sundays, to declare to you what in deepest humility would seem to me to be the attitude of Christ in the matter before us.

“What is a church?  It is a body of disciples professing to acknowledge Christ as Master.  What does He want such a body to do?  Whatever will most effectively make God’s kingdom come on earth, and His will be done as in heaven.  What is the most necessary work of this church in Milton?  It is to go out and seek and save the lost.  It is to take up its cross and follow the Master.  And as I see Him to-day he beckons this church to follow Him into the tenements and slums of this town and be Christs to those who do not know Him.  As I see Him He stands beckoning with pierced palms in the direction of suffering and disease and ignorance and vice and paganism, saying:  ‘Here is where the work of Calvary Church lies.’  I do not believe the work of this church consists in having so many meetings and socials and pleasant gatherings and delightful occasions among its own members; but the real work of this church consists in getting out of its own little circle in which it has been so many years moving, and going, in any way most effective to the world’s wounded, to bind up the hurt and be a savior to the lost.  If we do not understand this to be the true meaning of church work, then I believe we miss its whole meaning.  Church work in Milton to-day does not consist in doing simply what your fathers did before you.  It means helping to make a cleaner town, the purification of our municipal life, the actual planning and accomplishment of means to relieve physical distress, a thorough understanding